Monday, 15 April 2019

"Fast, pain-free divorces? They are slow agony for our children"

Peter Hitchens has, for at least the last couple of decades, been in the painful position of being right about a lot of important things, but continually been treated as not even worth listening to (most recently: before June 2016, he was telling us that "Leave" would win the EU referendum, and that a massive constitutional crisis would result because the promises begin given that the result would be implemented were incredible). He was no-platformed before his time, largely for his conservative social views.

A lot more people are now becoming used to this concept, i.e. of counter-arguments to the prevailing "progressive" orthodoxy, especially on social matters, simply being ignored or treated as unsayable, instead of debated. The culture has now been shifted to the extent that idea of "no platform for bigots" (where "bigot" means "person who doesn't agree with us") is being mainstreamed, promoted as virtuous and, yes, anyone who disagrees with it is probably a bigot who shouldn't be listened to (see what they did there?). There should, it is being said throughout our universities and beyond, be "no platform" for anyone whose ideas aren't part of revolutionary left-wing politics. Society should belong only to left-wing revolutionaries; anyone else must become an UnPerson, and their existence should disappear down the Memory Hole, never to be referred to by any civilised person.

Peter Hitchens was, as I say, no-platformed before his time, from at least 1997 onwards, as he valiantly sought to ask (among many other things) why it was of absolutely no apparent interest to the British media how many prominent "New Labour" figures had been, as he was before recanting and openly detailing his errors, members of revolutionary Trotskyist organisations.